Five Year Strategic Plan for the Society for Conservation Biology: 2016-2020

Introduction

The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) is a global membership community of thousands of professional conservation scientists and practitioners. Founded in 1985, SCB’s membership and the breadth of its activities have grown with each decade. The journal Conservation Biology was founded in 1987; Conservation Letters launched in 2008. SCB’s Executive Office was established in Washington, D.C. in 2001. Since 2003, the establishment of sections and topical working groups has fostered SCB’s involvement with regional matters and enhanced SCB’s visibility around the world. Global and section-level meetings reunite longtime members and attract numerous young conservation professionals to SCB, prompting the initiation of new chapters in many countries.

With this 2016-2020 strategic plan SCB provides a high-level view of our common vision for the organization, reflecting our past challenges and successes, and our ongoing development as a leading global conservation science institution. SCB’s executive office, committees, sections, working groups, and chapters develop their workplans for implementing programs and activities focused on prioritized objectives aligned with the strategic areas and goals summarized in this brief outline document. These implementation workplans guide our global and regional development of programs and services valuable to our diverse body of conservation scientists and practitioners. Implementing our strategic priorities maximizes our conservation impact while enhancing our financial stability and organizational growth. We welcome member input to this open and transparent process.

The SCB Executive Office facilitates our strategic implementation of this plan through the coordinated work of our committees, sections, chapters, and working groups, leveraging the strengths of each of these organizational structures. SCB’s fiscally responsible implementation approach is explicitly coordinated with our business plan. Achieving the goals identified in this SCB Strategic Plan through implementation of priority objectives will strengthen the application of conservation science, furthering our mission to advance both the science and the practice of conserving the Earth’s biological diversity.